Reference number not found

Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use and protect any information about you. It also tells you how to get in touch if you have any questions, which we will be more than happy to answer. If you’re interested in what we do with cookies and similar technologies, please check out our Cookie Statement.

We may change this Notice from time to time; so please check back here for any updates.

We offer a range of services related to online car rental, including products and services such as insurance, through our own websites, mobile apps, emails and text messages (‘platforms’). We also do this through our business partners’ websites, social media and other platforms. This Notice applies to all the personal data we collect while we’re doing this, or when you contact us by email, live chat, phone or post.

Personal data you give us

We can’t help you make a booking or request a quote without certain information. When you do either of those things, we ask you for the information we need so we can give you what you want. This is pretty standard stuff and may include your name, age, date and place of birth and contact details (email, address and phone number). It can also include information about your passport, identity card and driving licence – and your loyalty programme number and payment information.

In addition, we collect information from your computer when you use one of our platforms, even if you don’t make a booking. This may include your IP address, which browser you use, and your language settings. There are also situations where we receive information about you from third parties, or automatically collect other information. This is a basic overview of the information we collect. Would you like to know more?

Personal data you give us

We store and use the information that you give us. When you make a booking, we need at least your name, email address and payment information. We might also ask for your home address, phone number and date of birth, and the names of any additional drivers.

If you get in touch with us (by phone, by email or through social media, for example) we will collect information from you there too.

After your booking, we may ask you to provide a review to help us improve our services, and to help ensure future customers get exactly what they’re looking for.

There are also other ways you might give us information. For example, if you’re browsing with your mobile device, you can share your current location with us, so we can provide you with the best possible service. To make things easier, you can also open a user account, which lets you review and manage your bookings, as well as saving your personal settings and your passport and driving licence details. It also makes it easier to make future bookings.

Personal data you give us about others

You might add someone as an additional driver, or you might make a booking on behalf of someone else, for example, a friend, family member or colleague. If you do, please make sure that that person knows you’re giving us their details, and has accepted the way we handle their personal data (as described in this Notice). This is your responsibility.

Personal data we collect automatically

When you make a booking, we record what platform you made it on, and how you got to our platform (if you came through from another site, for example).

Even if you don’t end up making a booking, we may automatically collect some information when you visit our platforms. This may include your IP address, which pages you’ve visited, which browser you’re using, and information about clicks. It might also include information about your computer’s operating system, its application version, language settings, device-specific setting and characteristics, and data that identifies your device.

If you’re using a mobile device, we might also collect location details. And we might analyse, and process basic data related to the apps installed on it (e.g. name, description and category).

Personal data we get from other companies

We may also get information about you from social media platforms, our business partners, subsidiaries of the Rentalcars.com corporate family, affiliates of the Booking Holdings Inc corporate group (see here for more information) and other third parties. For example:

We work with affiliate business partners to offer our services on other platforms. When you make a booking on one of these platforms, we may share your personal data with them, and they may share your personal data with us.

The companies that provide the services you have booked through our platforms may need to send us information about you – for example, if your booking leads to an insurance claim or customer service dispute.

Our business partners may also send us information about you that may help us show you more relevant adverts.

We may combine any of this information with the information you give us directly.

Please see ‘Why do we collect and use your personal data?’ for details.

Why do we collect and use your personal data?

We ask for your personal data so we can book your car (and anything else you need for your booking), and make sure you get the best possible service. We also use it to contact you, and to tell you about our latest deals and special offers. These are the main reasons we collect your personal data, but there are other reasons too. Would you like to know more?

Why do we collect and use your personal data?

We may use your personal data in the following ways:

Bookings: First and foremost, we use your personal data to make and administer your booking, and to forward the necessary details to the company that provides your car (or other product or service, such as insurance). This includes sending you communications in relation to your booking, such as confirmations, modifications and reminders.

Customer service: We provide international customer service 24/7 in over 40 languages. Our international customer service teams need your details so they can help you make a booking, for example, or to reply to any queries you may have before, during or after your booking.

Customer reviews: We may use your contact details to send you a short questionnaire about your booking. This helps us understand and improve our service and the service our business partners provide.

Account facilities: To make things easier, you can create a user account on our platforms. This involves giving us your personal data, and it lets you do a number of useful things. You can manage your bookings or other purchases, take advantage of special offers, and manage your personal settings and preferences. It also makes it easier to make future bookings.

Marketing activities: We also use your personal data for marketing activities, which may include:

Contacting you by post, phone, email or SMS (depending on the contact details you give us) with our latest news, special offers, discounts and updates, including details of our products and services (and/or those of our group companies or affiliate business partners). You can unsubscribe from these marketing communications quickly, easily and at any time – just click the “unsubscribe” link in any email or visit our Data Subject Request Portal.

Contacting you by phone, email or SMS with information about insurance products that you didn’t include in your booking.

Showing you relevant offers on our platforms or on third-party websites, including social media sites.

Inviting you to participate in promotional activities (such as referral programs or competitions).

Communicating with you: There may be other times when we contact you by phone, email or SMS. There could be a number of reasons for this, including:

Responding to, and handling any requests you have made.

Emailing you a reminder about a booking you didn’t finalise, to see if you need any help to do so. We see this as a useful additional service because it lets you carry on with a booking without having to find the car again or fill in all the booking details from scratch.

Sending you a questionnaire or inviting you to review your experience.

Sending you other material related to your booking, such as how to contact us (or another company) if you need help during your booking.

Sending you a summary of your previous bookings.

Sending you other administrative messages, which may include security alerts, even if you don’t have an upcoming booking.

Market research: We may ask you to take part in market research. Any additional personal data that you give us as part of this research will be used only with your consent.

Fraud detection and prevention: To provide a safe, trustworthy service, we use your personal data to detect and prevent fraud and other illegal or unwanted activities. Similarly, we may use personal data for risk assessment and security purposes, which can include verifying users and bookings. This can sometimes mean we may have to put certain bookings on hold.

Improving our services: We analyse personal data to help us improve the functionality and quality of our online services, and enhance the whole user experience. We’re always working to make our platforms easier and more enjoyable for you to use.

Customer reviews: After your booking, we may invite you to review the services that we or our business partner provided. Your review will help future customers make the right choice, and help our business partners improve the services they offer. By submitting a review, you are agreeing that it can be displayed, as explained in our Terms and Conditions. You can make a review anonymously or simply put your first name and country location.

Call monitoring: We may record phone calls and/or allow other staff to listen in to them, to help us train our colleagues and make sure we’re consistently providing a top-quality service. We automatically delete recordings after a specified time, unless we have a legitimate reason not to (if we think there’s evidence of fraud, for example).

Legal purposes: Finally, in certain cases, we may need to use your personal data to handle and resolve legal disputes, for regulatory investigations, for compliance reasons, or to make sure we apply our terms and conditions accurately.

To process your personal data like this, we rely on the following legal grounds:

Performance of a contract: We need to use your personal data to fulfil any contract you’ve made with us. For example, when you book a car, we need to transfer your booking details to the rental company to make sure your car is waiting for you.

Legitimate interests: We may use your information for our ‘legitimate interests’ (a term which applies to anything we believe is an essential part of carrying out our business effectively – at the same time as respecting your rights and upholding the law). For example, to provide you with the most suitable content on our platforms, including our emails and newsletters; to improve and promote our products and services; and for administrative purposes.

Consent: We may rely on your consent to use your personal data in certain circumstances, for example direct marketing purposes. You may withdraw your consent at any time via our Data Subject Request Portal or by emailing datarights@rentalcars.com, stating “Privacy” in the subject line.

What third parties do we share your personal data with – and why?

There are a number of different business partners integrated in the services we provide, and in certain situations we may share your personal data with them. In most cases, we’re simply passing on your booking details to the business partners that are helping us deliver the service you’re requesting. We will also share your data with other third parties, which may include payment service providers, advertising partners, subsidiaries of the Rentalcars.com corporate family and affiliates of the Booking Holdings Inc corporate group, and – in some cases – the authorities. These are the main reasons we would share your personal data. Would you like to know more?

What third parties do we share your personal data with – and why?

The company/companies supplying your car rental and/or related products and services: To make your booking, we need to send the relevant details to the company/companies supplying the car and/or other related products (including insurance) that you have requested. These details may include your name, age range, contact details (email, address and phone number), date and place of birth, passport information, driving licence information and any preferences you told us about while booking. If there is a dispute about your booking or insurance cover, or any other kind of customer service issue, we may need to provide the rental company with some information about the booking process as well as the dispute itself. This may include a copy of your booking confirmation, to prove that a booking was actually made, as well as any information related to your complaint. Please be aware that any information you provide directly to the company/companies supplying your car and/or related products will be stored and used in accordance with their own privacy notice(s) and terms and conditions.

Our business partners: We work with business partners around the world. Some of our partners offer or advertise our services, as well as helping our other business partners offer and advertise their own travel-related services (including insurance). These business partners may also include the Booking Holdings Inc. corporate group, which includes Rentalcars.com and our sister companies (Agoda.com, Booking.com, priceline.com, KAYAK, and OpenTable). This may mean that their services are integrated into our platforms. When you make a booking on one of our business partners’ platforms, they’ll send us some of the personal data you have provided to them. Similarly, we may send our business partners some of the personal data related to your booking. This could be to help them analyse their business, for example, or to help them run their loyalty programmes. It could also be so that they can send you things like special offers, but only if you’ve given your consent for this. If the business partner provides customer service support, we will send them the details of your booking that they need to give you the support you need. In any of these cases, the handling of your personal data is governed by the privacy notices of these business partners. When you make a booking on a business partner’s website, please take the time to read their privacy notice to see how they handle your personal data. When you buy a product or service provided by one of our business partners, we will send them the personal data they need to provide it. Finally, we may also exchange information about our users with business partners for fraud detection/prevention purposes, but only as strictly necessary.

Competent authorities: We may share your personal data with government or investigative authorities if we’re required to do so by law (or any regulation having the force of law). This includes court orders, subpoenas and orders arising from legal processes and criminal investigations. We may also disclose your personal data if strictly necessary for the prevention, detection or prosecution of fraud and other criminal acts. And we may need to disclose personal data to competent authorities to protect and defend our rights or properties, or the rights or properties of our business partners.

Third-party service providers: We may use third-party service providers to process your personal data on our behalf and support us in providing our services. For example, we may use them to contact you, or to send booking information on our behalf to the company providing the service, or to manage aspects of our site, call centres or marketing activities. We may also use third-party service providers for market research, fraud detection and prevention services, including anti-fraud screening services. These third parties are bound by confidentiality clauses and are not allowed to use your personal data for other purposes.

Advertising partners: We may share your email address and other personal data with third-party advertising partners, so we can make sure you see relevant advertisements when we market our services via third-party business partners. We also work with third-party advertisement networks to market services on other platforms, and with third-party suppliers who help us analyse our own data. All these third parties will be bound by confidentiality agreements and will not be allowed to use your personal data for any other purposes. For more information on personalised advertisements and your choices, please read “How and why do we use these technologies?” and “It’s your choice: Opting in and opting out” in our Cookie Statement.

Payment service providers and other financial institutions: We also work with third-party payment service providers to arrange payment or payment guarantees. If you (or the holder of the bank card used to make your booking) request a chargeback, we may need to share certain booking details with the payment service provider and the relevant financial institution. This may include a copy of your booking confirmation or the IP address used to make your booking. We may also share information with relevant financial institutions, if we consider it necessary for fraud detection and prevention purposes.

How is your personal data shared within the Booking Holdings Inc. corporate group?

Rentalcars.com is part of the Booking Holdings Inc. corporate group. See https://www.bookingholdings.com/ for more information.

We may receive personal data about you from other companies of the Booking.com Holdings Inc. corporate group or share your personal data with them for the following purposes:

To provide services (including to make, administer and manage reservations or handle payments);

To provide customer support services;

To detect, prevent and investigate fraud, other illegal activities and data breaches;

For analytical and product improvement purposes;

To provide personalised offers or send you marketing with your consent, or as otherwise permitted by applicable law;

To ensure compliance with applicable laws.

For purposes A to E, we rely on our legitimate interest to share and receive personal data. For example, we work closely with Booking.com to offer accommodation and attractions services to our customers, and all companies within the Booking Holdings Inc. group of companies may need to exchange customer personal data to ensure it protects all users from fraudulent activities on its platforms.

For purpose F, we rely where applicable on compliance with legal obligations (such as lawful law enforcement requests).

How do we make use of mobile devices?

We offer free apps for a range of mobile devices, as well as versions of our regular website that have been optimised for mobile and tablet browsing. They collect and process your personal data in much the same way as our other platforms do, and they also allow you to find local rental cars based on your current location. Would you like to know more?

How do we make use of mobile devices?

If you agree to it, we can send ‘push’ notifications straight to your mobile device, so you don’t miss important information about your booking. And, if you let us access your device’s location or contact details, we can provide extra services if you request them. Your mobile device will have instructions on allowing push notifications and giving us access to this kind of data.

To give you a better service and more relevant marketing, we may use something known as ‘cross-device tracking’. This just means we look at the way you use our platforms on more than one device: we could, for example, combine data from your mobile phone and your home computer. This is something we may or may not use cookies for (for more on cookies and similar technologies, please see our Cookie Statement).

To make sure you find deals that are more likely to interest you in our newsletter, we look at the searches you make and the services you book on multiple devices once you’ve signed in to your user account. If you don’t want us to do this, just sign out before you browse, or unsubscribe from our newsletter.

Cross-device tracking can also mean that when you’re using one device, you may see personalised advertisements from lots of different companies, based on your activities on linked devices. The NAI (Network Advertising Initiative) should stop this happening if you opt out of the NAI behavioural advertising program (our Cookie Statement gives you the link you need, under “It's your choice: Opting in and opting out”). Please note: simply signing out of your user account won’t stop this happening.

What security procedures do we put in place to safeguard your personal data?

Our business systems and procedures ensure we take all reasonable steps to protect your personal data and safeguard it against any misuse or unauthorised access, in accordance with UK and European data protection laws. We also have specific security procedures and restrictions (both technical and physical) that limit access to, and use of, any personal data that we hold. Only authorised personnel can access personal data – and they’re only allowed to do it for specific, authorised reasons.

How do we treat the personal data of children?

We don’t provide services to children under the age of 18 and we reserve the right to delete any information we may receive from a child under this age. We may receive information about children in certain situations, such as an insurance claim or a customer service dispute. If that happens, we will only collect and use that information with the consent of the child’s parent or guardian.

How can you control the personal data you have given us?

You have the right, subject to some legal exceptions, to access, correct or delete any personal data we keep about you, and to object to your personal data being processed. You can use our Data Subject Access Portal to enforce any of these rights. If you do, we will ask for further information to confirm your identity, to keep your information safe and we will handle your request in accordance with applicable UK data protection law. You can update or delete your user account at any time by signing in on our site.

When you make a booking or request a quote, we ask whether you’d like to opt in to receive marketing emails. You can opt out at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” in any of these marketing emails, or by updating your email preferences in your user account.

Who is responsible for the processing of personal data on our platforms?

TravelJigsaw Limited (trading as Rentalcars.com) controls the processing of personal data on its platforms. TravelJigsaw Limited is a private limited liability company, incorporated under the laws of the United Kingdom, and has offices at 35 Fountain Street, Manchester, M2 2AN. If you have any questions, concerns or comments about our practices, or this Privacy Notice, please email dataprotectionofficer@rentalcars.com, stating “Privacy” in the subject line, and we’ll get right back to you. When it comes to privacy, we’re always happy to talk.

Quick links

Rentalcars.com is a trading name of TravelJigsaw Limited which is a limited company registered in England and Wales (Number: 05179829) whose registered address is at 100 New Bridge Street, London, EC4V 6JA. VAT number: GB 855349007.
ID: B3341

Rentalcars.com is part of Booking Holdings Inc., the world leader in online travel & related services.

Rentalcars.com (FCA Firm Reference No 777648) is an Appointed Representative of Cover Genius Limited, which is authorised and registered by the Financial Conduct Authority, Firm Reference No 750711.
Traveljigsaw Insurance Limited is incorporated in Malta and is authorised by the Malta Financial Services Authority to carry on the business of insurance in terms of the Insurance Business Act 1998. Company Registration Number: C82173 Registered Office, Development House, St Anne Street, Floriana, FRN 9010, Malta.